Tércio Pacitti
Computer Science Pioneer
1928-2014

Tércio Pacitti was born in Atibaia, San Paolo, Brazil, son of Antônio Pacitti and Isabel de Moraes. Antonio's parents (Ippolito Pacitti & Anna Anatolia Paciani) were originally from Paliano, Frosinone and had emigrated from Italy at the end of the 19th century.

He graduated as an Aeronautical Engineer from Istituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA) in 1952 and subsequently completed a Masters (1961) and Ph.D. (1971) at University of California, Berkeley.

Tércio wrote several books in computer science; one of his best known was The Fortran Monitor, which from 1967 to 1987 had sold 250,000 copies in the country, and Do Fortran à Internet (From Fortran to the Internet), a retrospective view of his life and information technology in the world. In 2006, he completed his final book Paradigmas do software aberto (Paradigms of open source software).

He led the introduction of information technology at the ITA, at the Air Force, at COPPE-UFRJ and at UNIRIO. He was rector of the ITA between 1982 and 1984, and established the course of Computer Engineering.

His last post in the Air Force Command, as Major-Brigadier Engineer, was the Head of the Directorate of Engineering in 1986/1987. He was president of the Council of Informatics of the State of Rio de Janeiro from 1987 to 1990.

On April 24, 2019, the President of the Republic, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, granted Tércio the title of Patron of Information Technology of Aeronautics.